Re: The
past is another country

: : In general, the more
remote a thing seems in time, the less its reality, and w
: : ith this goes
naturally the assumption of its relatively sharp separation from
: : anything
concerning our personal lives.

: : can you explain it for me, thanks!

: People
(mistakenly) tend to believe that events which happened a long long time ago cannot
have any significant relevance to them personally, simply because they happened
so long ago.

: The statement coincidentally ties into a recent thread here dealing
with Santayana's assertion that "those who cannot remember the past are condemned
to repeat it."

There's two ways of looking at this.

Are we talking about
a person's personal history?
People separate themselves from things that happened
to them years ago. There is a saying, "The past is another country." Or someone
might say, "That happened to me in another lifetime."

Or are we talking about
the past in general? People sometimes look upon the history as a bunch of dates
and faded photographs rather than events that happened to living, breathing people
a lot like ourselves.